


Staying In (A Girls' Night Remix)

by LadySilver



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/F, Nonconsensual grooming, Nonconsensual kissing, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-30
Updated: 2015-06-30
Packaged: 2018-04-05 13:55:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4182411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadySilver/pseuds/LadySilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Felicity tried to make plans to do nothing. Somehow, even those plans got canceled.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Staying In (A Girls' Night Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crookedspoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/gifts).
  * Inspired by [I could hardly wait](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3513002) by [骸骨 (crookedspoon)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/pseuds/%E9%AA%B8%E9%AA%A8). 



The day was too long, saving Starling City again, so when Felicity's phone rang on the way home, she tried not to answer it. She really did. But before she finished telling herself all the good reasons to ignore the buzzing, she was pulling the phone out of her purse and answering the call—which was fortunately from Ray, and not Oliver.

“So...are we still on for tonight?” Ray asked, perhaps reading in the desultory way that she greeted him that she might not be feeling sociable.

Felicity made a face that he couldn't see. She hated to cancel on him. Again. “I don't know,” she demurred.

“What if I suggested an evening for two at Chateau La Lune?” Ray said, naming what was possibly the most expensive restaurant in town. Felicity had driven by the building hundreds of times, but it had never occurred to her that one day she might be able to walk through the doors.

She hesitated, less because she was tempted by the offer and more because he sounded so pathetic. Saying no to Ray was hard enough, especially since she'd been looking forward to this date all week, but after the day she'd had... 

She sped up to pass a teenage couple who were oozing down the sidewalk, and found herself crammed between them and the brick walls of the office building on her right when they suddenly expanded. Her phone slipped from her grip; she fumbled and caught it—and accidentally pressed the end button. With a sigh, she stepped into the alcove of a doorway and hit redial. Coordination didn't come easily to her, as it was. She'd mustered enough to get through the day—through the part of the day that really mattered, where lives were at stake—but clearly she was losing her ability to keep it together, which was even more reason not to go out. A reason she was pretty sure Ray would never understand. “We got disconnected,” she offered, as soon as the line picked up. The white lie tripped off her tongue, even as a part of her wondered how accidental the disconnect had been. 

“Oh, good. I thought you hung up on me. I was going to call back and offer to send the limo to pick you up. Thought that might sweeten the deal.”

Felicity let her eyes slip close while she drew a steadying breath. The offer was tempting: limo, a nice dinner out that she didn't have to make or clean up after, conversation that didn't revolve around killing or destruction. “I'm sorry,” she said, mind slipping from the glamor to longingly thinking of her fuzzy pajama pants and the contents of her DVR. “Raincheck?”

Ray barely paused, that was the kind of understanding guy he was. “Sure. Raincheck.” Disappointment tinged his voice, and Felicity was tempted for just a second to back down and go out with him, until he gave her another glimpse of what he planned for the evening. “I've been working on this new project...”

She let Ray's excited explanation pass into background noise while again working on passing the teenage couple, who somehow still took up more space than any two people should. She made it this time, only once stumbling as her shoe caught in a sidewalk crack and tried to throw itself into traffic. From behind her, she heard a high-pitched giggle. She assumed it was the girl from the couple laughing at her, but when she threw a dirty glance over her shoulder toward them, they were half down each others' throats and paying no attention to anyone around them.

Felicity picked up her pace, letting Ray's tempo keep her company through the last few blocks toward her apartment. Occasionally, she offered a “wow” or a “really?” to let him know she was still on the line.

She made it through the front down, up the elevator, and to her apartment without tripping or running into anyone else, despite the crowd of early party-goers who tumbled through the door and into the elevator with her. Their garish costumes and reek of alcohol were odd for a Thursday, but considering the company she kept... Only as she was stepping into her apartment, and trying to figure out the best moment to interrupt Ray so she could end this call for real, did she sense trouble.

“Someone's following me,” she stated, trying to keep her volume from rising. If she really was in danger, letting the assailant think he had the upper-hand could only work in her favor.

Ray's prattle stopped and he turned instantly serious. “Where are you? Are you safe?”

“My apartment,” Felicity answered. She cast a glance down the hall toward the elevator that sat with its doors still open, then the other direction at the long line of closed and locked doors behind which anyone could be hiding. “And I don't know.” Shutting her own door, she locked the handle and threw the bolt, before peeking out through the eye-hole. The blurred fish-eye view of the hallway showed nothing, but her skin still crawled in the way that years of working with a superhero had taught her to trust.

“Stay on the line,” Ray ordered.

She nodded and backed slowly into her apartment, turning on every light as she went. The space wasn't large, and there wasn't much she could do short of locking herself in her bedroom and hoping that would keep her safe until better help could arrive. She was just reaching for that handle when the front door crashed open, the locks splintering straight through the door frame.

Felicity yelped and dropped the phone, only distantly hearing it skid under the bedroom door and out of reach.

“Ta-da!” the new arrival cried, throwing her arms in the air and jutting out a hip like she'd just concluded a performance. “Are ya ready?”

She was a jester, complete with the white face paint and the hat with the bells on it. She had to have been one of the party-goers from the elevator, though all of them had seemed too in the weeds to break down a door.

“What?” Felicity managed, then, “Who?”

The jester cartwheeled into the room and landed on one knee, a gun appearing from nowhere to point at Felicity's face. A wide grin stretched across her face, and then a giggle fell out of her mouth that sounded exactly like the one Felicity had heard on the street. “Harley Quinn's the name, and boyfriend gettin' is the game.” She pulled the trigger. There was a small pop and a puff of smoke; confetti rained to the floor.

That was so not what Felicity was expecting that anything she might have answered fled. She watched in a dumb stupor as the colorful paper squares ruined all the housecleaning she had managed to keep up with. In the visual excitement, she missed the second pop the gun made, though she felt the tiny sting in her neck that followed.

She awoke, tied to a kitchen chair that had been pulled into the living room and set in front of the balcony doors. Duct tape covered her mouth and bound her hands and ankles while afternoon sunlight streamed through the glass and lit the whole space like flood lamps. The view and the light were two things Felicity loved most about the apartment, especially now that she spent so much time holed up in a dank basement. Now she wiggled and peered through the glass, searching for the rescue that had to be on its way. 

“I've been envisioning this for a long while,” Harley said. Her voice cut through the fog that remained from whatever drug she'd shot Felicity with, and for a single moment Felicity imagined that she was about to wake up for real from this obvious nightmare in which a clown was twirling through her apartment, humming show tunes that Felicity recognized, but couldn't place. Except she was awake, and the clown wasn't just humming and dancing, she was also rifling through Felicity's things. Anger rose hot within Felicity and she tugged harder at her bonds, making the chair thump on the floor. The duct tape stayed as tight as ever. 

While Felicity had been out, the clown had trashed the rest of the living room: pulling out drawers, pulling the cushions off the couch, scattering the books and knick-knacks from the bookshelves. Who knew what she had done to the rest of the apartment. Right now she had the always-packed travel bag under her arm—the one Felicity kept for emergencies that might just require her to get out of Starling City on a moment's notice—and was digging through it like she thought precious jewels lay at the bottom. As if Felicity cared what the clown had been envisioning, she continued, “Getting out on a clear day, no cloud in sight, sunlight warming my skin. How I managed, y'ask?” She looked at Felicity then, making eye-contact for the first time. “As they say: you can if you think you can.”

With a “YAY!” she extracted her prize, dropping the bag to the floor, where it landed with a painful crunch.

Felicity's muffled protest barely registered.

“Relax. I'm not gonna rape you with this, if that's whatcha fear,” Harley said. She narrowed her eyes at the curling iron in her hand, then pirouetted to the electric socket closest to Felicity and plugged the device in. “I'm just prettyin' you up until your boyfriend arrives.” She winked and pecked a kiss over where Felicity's mouth would be in the tape weren't in the way.

 _She knows,_ Felicity thought, the anger giving way to panic. She must have found the phone and seen that Felicity was talking to Ray. Who knew what this mad woman had planned for him. Once again, she tugged at her bonds, hoping to get enough give that she could at least free her hands. She didn't know what she'd do with them, but she had to figure out a way to warn Ray.

“What do you want with him?” she tried to ask. 

At the “mmmhm mmmn rraaa” that actually came out, Harley clapped her hands and declared, “That's the spirit!” She leaned over, planted another kiss on Felicity's covered mouth, then frowned and _tsked_.

Five minutes later, she dabbed a finger on the tape and smoothed the drawing she'd made there with Felicity's lipstick. In the faint reflection on the glass doorway, Felicity saw that Harley'd drawn lips on the tape over Felicity's real ones. The red bow of cartoon lips stood in stark contrast to the widened, panicked eyes above them, and Felicity couldn't help thinking of the Doll Maker and how he'd decorate the girls he'd killed. At her whimper of fear, Harley gently took Felicity's face between her hands and planted a long kiss right on her newly drawn mouth. When she stepped back, Harley's lips were stained with Felicity's lipstick: a color and brand she'll never be able to buy again.

Fifteen minutes after that, Harley set the curling iron down. “Kay, darlin'” she cooed. “We're gettin' you all fixed up. That's one lucky guy who gets to be kissing you.” She considered, then added, “And I don't know why guys get to be the ones having all the fun.” Selecting one of the new curls she'd made, Harley twisted it around her finger, then pulled free with all the flourish of escaping from a Chinese finger trap.

The flop of hair against her face sent a shiver down her spine, and for the first time since stepping through her door, Felicity wasn't sure if the emotion that accompanied was fear.

Harley's fingers, with their long nails painted in complicated patterns, drifted over Felicity's head, though her hair, along her scalp. Felicity was unable not to melt under the touch. Anyone who was that careful couldn't be planning to kill her, right?

“You've been very cooperative so far,” Harley stated. “I'll remove this--” She tapped one edge of the duct tape even as her other hand continued stroking Felicity's head--”if you promise not to scream.”

It took a moment for Felicity to convince herself that Harley wasn't promising to remove her head before she could bring herself to nod. There was a threat buried in Harley's statement. Hell, there was a threat buried in everything Harley said.

The tape came off with a loud rip that left Felicity's skin smarting and her tongue nearly bitten through from the effort to hold back the yell that wanted to erupt. Her eyes started to water; why was Harley being nice? Was this even what nice looked like? Or had Felicity already lost the ability to trust her own judgment? She was about to test whether she could ask any of those questions without blurting out all the others, or worse, when Harley shut her up.

This kiss was not a peck.

Harley's mouth pressed over hers, her lips warm and slightly wet. Her fingers kept stroking along Felicity's scalp as she pulled her even closer.

“Am I interrupting something?” a voice interrupted. “I thought this was a hostage situation.”

Harley pulled back, and Felicity spotted Ray standing, looking slightly baffled, inside her apartment door. The door had been open the whole time.

“Who the hell is this?” Harley asked, looking at Felicity as if she'd lied to her.

Funny, Felicity thought, since she hadn't agreed to any part of what was going on, especially the whole being strapped to a chair thing. She dipped her tongue over her lips and tasted the heat that Harley had left behind. Well, maybe she would have agreed to that. If she'd been asked. “My boyfriend,” she answered.

Harley took in Ray's business suit, his height, his brown hair. She didn't try to hide her disappointment.

While her captor judged her boyfriend, Felicity attempted her best eye-language to draw Ray's attention to her bonds, to point out that she hadn't been cheating on him. This wasn't what she'd meant by 'staying in,” and, in fact, she really wanted to be released now, before Harley decided that those Chateau La Lune reservations should be for three. At the absurd image of the fancy restaurant agreeing to seat and serve the _clown_ , Felicity let out a snort. So busy was she in not breaking into a full on laugh that she missed whatever Harley and Ray said next.

A quiet night at home, that was all she wanted, Felicity thought. Why was that too much to ask?


End file.
